Mindfulness is more than just focusing on the present. It is a focus on the present with an open heart. An open heart means seeing the world through positive emotions such as love, kindness, compassion, and empathy. When we engage in the world with an open heart, we can make the most of each moment, find meaning, and experience a sense of ease and flow as we move through the day. We experience an increased sense of connectedness with our lives. We recognize and cultivate life by filtering our experiences through positive emotions such as joy, hope, gratitude, compassion, and kindness. Being able to do this is critically important when facing serious challenges as we are today. That's because positive emotions help us bounce back from negative experiences and move forward productively (Fredrickson et al., 2003). However, because of the brain's negative bias, we are probably more familiar with negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, guilt, and shame.
The Brain’s Negative Bias
Your brain preferentially scans for, registers, stores, recalls, and reacts to unpleasant experiences. The remedy is not to suppress negative experiences when they happen but to foster positive experiences and allow time to take them in so they become a permanent part of you.
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Barbara Fredrickson, a leading researcher in positive emotions, prescribes a positivity ratio of 3 to 1 to live with an open heart. This means we must seek at least three heartfelt positive emotional experiences for every negative emotional experience. Her research indicates that this ratio is the tipping point, which predicts whether people languish or flourish (Fredrickson, 2009). And this process only takes about 15 to 30 seconds of experiencing joy, contentment, and pleasure to activate the systems that change your brain (Fredrickson, 2009).
Are You Getting Enough Positivity in Your Life?
Many believe we must wait until something good happens to us to experience joy or happiness. However, we can learn to manage our attention to seek and find good things, even when things look pretty grim. Many people are amazed at how many good things they can find when they intend to do so. And it is worth the effort because evidence suggests that those who experience more positive than negative emotions are more likely to thrive (Fredrickson, 2013). However, this is challenging. We are biologically wired to perceive and focus on negative experiences more than positive ones. Bad events, large and small, have stronger and more lasting consequences than comparable good events. Furthermore, bad moods and negative emotions have more potent effects than good ones (Baumeister et al., 2001).
Fortunately, most of us experience far more positive experiences than we realize. When we focus on the positive, we can rewire our brains to recognize these things more readily. We know we can change the structure and patterns in significant ways through brain plasticity. This can be done simply by changing our thoughts. We can learn how to perceive the world in a new and different way.
Take a few moments to listen to this brief exercise to help you perceive more positive experiences in your life.
References
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323-370.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2003). The value of positive emotions: The emerging science of positive psychology is coming to understand why it's good to feel good. American Scientist, 91(4), 330-335.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity. Harmony.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). Positive emotions broaden and build. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 47, pp. 1-53). Academic Press.